DRM is official on the Far Cry 2 Forums is a post by a user reporting that a
conversation with a Ubisoft representative about DRM in Far Cry 2, and a
subsequent post by a Ubi Forum Manager confirms the use of the SecuROM DRM
indicated on
the French Ubisoft Shop yesterday (story). On a semi-related
note,
Riccitiello Says DRM a Minority Controversy has comments from the EA CEO
saying he feels that Digital Rights management only represents an issue for 0.2%
of their users: "We're still working out the kinks. We implemented a form of DRM
and it's something that 99.8 percent of users wouldn't notice. But for the other
.2 percent, it became an issue and a number of them launched a cabal online to
protest against it." Ubisoft has not answered our mails on the topic, but here
is the forum post on the Far Cry 2 DRM:

Some DRM points that will
hopefully answer some of your questions and will clarify some misunderstandings
about our DRM and SecuROM:

- You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs.

- Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called
“revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to
install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.

- You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke
system)

- Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations
can be provided.

- Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be
able to play Far Cry 2.

So what do people do, pay for a game that has a limit installationsor download a pirate version that has unlimited installations? Securom doesnt stop piraters from pirating it, but what does thatleave the people who pay for it, limited amount of times they canplay it! So what does that do, it makes people into piraters costhey dont want to be ripped off, thinking my system has crashedand now ive lost an install ive only 'x' amount left but i can download it and it will have unlimited installs, why should I pay forit in the 1st place...

If EA are killing themselves by pushing their games into the handsinto pirates and people who wouldnt normally download games. I feelthat EA are purposely doing this in the want to kill off the pc market!This comment was edited on Oct 19, 2008, 19:13.

what the hell is this supposed to mean? you can "re-activate" if necessary on 2 of 3 machines only?

You have a total of 5 installations. You can install it on up to 3 PC's at once. Leaving you 2 in reserve. So if you don't properly revoke, you are now down to 4 installs on a max of 3 PC's. You can call and get the limit increased back to 5 if you run into problems. If you uninstall from one PC, you can go put it on another PC.

Thats almost exactly how wrong you can get. this DOES NOT affect the pirates AT ALL. None. zip, zero. It affects EVERYONE ELSE. Thats the whole problem, Sure, it wont kill me, or my computer, or ruin my game, or my windows, perhaps it wont even use background resources, perhaps I wont even notice. Perhaps I will only install once anyway.

But guess what...

Its still annoying.

It annoys me, and its an INSULT to me as a paying customer, which is why I try to avoid getting games with this baloney. I actually got Crysis WH, but I didnt know the crap was in there. I was annoyed when I found out.

It's a new day : ) So let me just address the points they felt necessary to raise - since it hasn't been brought up that I could find on this entire thread.

You have 5 activations on 3 separate PCs

what the hell is this supposed to mean? you can "re-activate" if necessary on 2 of 3 machines only?

Uninstalling the game “refunds” an activation. This process is called “revoke”, so as long as you complete proper uninstall you will be able to install the game an unlimited number of times on 3 systems.

Doesn't this contradict the previous statement? Which is it? Unlimited or 5? I thought you could "revoke" them? They'll charge you an activation even if they realize it's on one of your previously activated machines?

You can upgrade your computer as many time as you want (using our revoke system)

WHAT? Do we have to uninstall our game before changing our videocard now, JUST IN CASE it decides to de-activate Far Cry 2?

Ubisoft is committed to the support of our games, and additional activations can be provided.

They HAVE patched their games appropriately in the past (still waiting form them to remove starforce from Silent Hunter 3 and Splinter Cell: CT though....) - usually by fixing game crashing bugs that should have been squashed in QA

Ubisoft is committed to the long term support of our games: you’ll always be able to play Far Cry 2.

See also, Splinter Cell Chaos Theory and Silent Hunter 3 - I'm pretty sure I've been reading online that these are Unplayable in Vista x64 -mainly because of Star Force but I've been told the installer detects the OS and doesn't let you install, maybe I'll give it a try this weekend to confirm - is that an unreasonable request? SC:CT and SH3 aren't THAT old, they're only 1 or 2 versions old for their respective franchises. So is playing them in Vista x64 unreasonable? If you say yes, then Ubisoft saying "you'll always be able to play Far Cry 2" is an unreasonable promise.

Edit:

Oh and did anybody else notice: It sounds like you can pick 3 machines to install on. Period. That's all. Even if you uninstall and revoke the activation, that's one of your 3 machines. Even if that machine (whatever a "machine" is) is thrown out. You've just lost one of the 3 machines you're allowed to activate this game one.

claim of my own but just trying to refute the claim that the game was originally planned as a PC exclusive.

Jerykk said "PC exclusive". I said it was announced for PC first, 6 months before the consoles. I expected it to get ported to consoles. My argument is that it was developed for PC first and then ported to console, not that it was ever an exclusive or that it was developed for consoles first and ported to PC. I think at one time in development (not public) it may have been considered an exclusive until they knew the capabilities of the consoles, but it was never marketed as an exclusive when the game was announced for PC.

Basically all I'm saying is that the lead platform was the PC and ported to consoles later in development.

CJ...yet none of that provides any proof whatsoever to back up your claim they made the console versions first and then ported to the PC.

That's not really what I was trying to claim though (I might have exaggerated for effect at one point with that flame on Ubi's porting "talents" ). I was actually not even trying to come up with a claim of my own but just trying to refute the claim that the game was originally planned as a PC exclusive.

There's really just no way it was with the history of these guys, Ubi Montreal. I am absolutely convinced that they always had console versions planned and that they used those early Xbox 360 dev kits (the Macs) to make sure that their Dunia engine would be flexible enough to run on consoles, too.

I am a strong believer in the theory that they just didn't announce the console versions at first because they were not sure whether to go for last gen or next gen. So they evaluated their options behind closed doors as they began developing the PC version, however, all the while fully knowing and intending to release the game on consoles eventually.

That's all I was trying to say. I do not believe in the "PC exclusive" fairytale. They might be saying that on PC-centric websites for PR reasons to make PC gamers feel better about themselves but there is just no fucking way that they ever seriously considered PC exclusivity.

Securom is supposed to be integrated into the exe so it doesn't activate until you run the uncracked exe. The crack consists of a few files which you replace before running the game, so Securom is never activated. Securom doesn't install when you install the game.

With these secuROM protected inflicted games, if you download a cracked exe, does that fix the whole activation problem?

Or would you have to download the entire pirated game? I'm guessing the former, but I'm not all that up on the workings of the pirate scene.

If it's just the .exe, and I bought the legit version, how do you prevent the game from wanting to check when you first install it?

While I don't typically let DRM stop me from buying something (Starforce shit excepted back when), I'm getting fucking annoyed that every game I now get shafts me with it. I just found out that my STEAM version of X:TC will have that fucking TAGES shit still on it. And that doesn't even make any fucking sense, since all Tages does is prevent a disc from being copied.

But those fucking drivers will still get installed through the Steam version. Fuckdammit.

No, it didn't. From the extremely small shoebox levels to the retarded interface (especially the tedious inventory management) and on to the non-existent challenge level it had "console" plastered all over it.On top of that it was also an epic borefest but, OK, granted, that had more to do with the lack of talent and creativity at BioWare than with the game being on consoles.

It's simply impossible to make any progress in any topic relating to "ports" or "consoles". Fine, be like that. I'm too busy enjoying computer games to worry about such things.

CJ...yet none of that provides any proof whatsoever to back up your claim they made the console versions first and then ported to the PC.

Do you really think they decided to make a 50 square kilometer open world game with muddy textures on the console first and port it to PC with high res textures and all sorts of extra graphical features?

I know you are dumb, but not that dumb. Everything points to the PC version being developed first.

Quote from the last link at Wikipedia... Before the launch of the Xbox 360, several alpha development kits were spotted using Apple's Power Mac G5 hardware. This was due to the system's PowerPC 970 processor running the same PowerPC architecture that the Xbox 360 would eventually run under IBM's Xenon processor.

KOTOR was a console port but did it play like a PC game? Yeah, damn right it did.

No, it didn't. From the extremely small shoebox levels to the retarded interface (especially the tedious inventory management) and on to the non-existent challenge level it had "console" plastered all over it.On top of that it was also an epic borefest but, OK, granted, that had more to do with the lack of talent and creativity at BioWare than with the game being on consoles.